


Hang The DJ

by Ehlihr (Elihaha)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 80s high school au, Alternate Universe - High School, Drug Use, Lots of stupid 80s slang, M/M, Q slur, Trans Male Character, also this is set in 1987, its not a huge plot point but yeah, its ya boi eli fucking things up, pretty fast paced, seriously why y'all this show was made in 1984, the 80s high school au nobody asked for, trans boy lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 15:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7719547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elihaha/pseuds/Ehlihr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lance can't get along with someone who likes the Smiths, he tells himself, after Allura rejects him and his Michael-Jackson-esque proposal for a date because she "prefers the Smiths".</p><p>Then, Keith (the boy who Lance does nothing but compete with in gym class) gives him a mixtape of his 'favourite Smiths' songs', to which Lance promises he won't listen to any of them. Proceeded by Lance listening to the tape on repeat for an entire weekend.</p><p>[Inspired by 80s music, high school life, and riddled with their awful slang.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hang The DJ

**Author's Note:**

> didn't proofread this before i posted bc im tired and this took three days anyway so im dead.
> 
> anyway heres the 80s au no one asked for, from someone who got this idea after watching Stranger Things like a complete asshole
> 
> Title from "Panic" by The Smiths.

“You guys will _never_ guess what I got my mom to buy.”

Lance’s shit eating grin speaks for itself as he waves around a plastic bag and his walkman excitedly.

Pidge looks uninterested. “You got a cassette?” they ask, raising a thick brow in response.

Hunk grimaces. “Yeah, dude, that’s not that cool. 

“You guys are real buzz-kills,” Lance says with an eye roll, pulling out the cassette and waving it in their faces. “It’s _Jackson_ guys! The man himself, and I have his fucking album! And we’re going to listen to it, right now.” He shuffles with the tape, fumbling it into its slot.

Pidge leans back against the wall, huffing. “It’s not even a CD, Lance. The sound’s gonna come out tinny and you can’t even _use_ a walkman without headphones.”

Lance freezes and practically rips the cassette out of the walkman, tossing it on his bed and running to his closet to fumble around for something. Hunk pipes up, “Watcha lookin’ for, man?”

A mumbled reply - “stereo!” - is heard from inside the closet, and Lance emerges with a clunky silver stereo in hand. “Gee, I hope this thing works, it’s like five years old,” he says, before throwing in the cassette and hitting play.

There’s an anxious moment of silence - even Pidge stops fumbling with the discarded walkman - as they wait for something other than staticky silence from the stereo. The wheels inside are turning but no sound is coming out.

“When’d you say you got it?” Hunk asks. Lance scratches the back of his neck. “Dunno, 1983? Might be older.”

“It’s broken,” Pidge pipes in helpfully, tension gone, and they start fiddling with their toy - a Gameboy or something (all Lance knew was that it was way too expensive to blow his allowance on).

“It’s not _broken_ , Pidge,” Lance snaps. “Hunk?”

Hunk, ever the mechanical genius, smacks the top of the stereo with his gloved palm, hard. Lance lets out a pained noise in response, about to grab for the machine, when suddenly, there was the sound of drums and synth, trumpets and a keyboard, as Michael Jackson’s _Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’_ poured out of the speakers. 

Lance cried out happily, giving Hunk a high five and Pidge a smug look. Pidge rolled their eyes. “Jackson’s not that bad,” they mumble.

“He’s the _best_ ,” Lance corrects, rolling his shoulders to the music with a pleased look on his face. “Man- I’m gonna dance to some Jackson with Allura when I finally ask her out. I’ll be impressive and everything, dip her when Michael hits those high notes, and-”

Pidge covers their ears. “Lance, stop being gross. And it’s not like she would ever say yes, anyway- she’s a senior, and she’s into that other senior, Shiro. Doubt she’s gonna say yes to being asked out by some slimy sophomore.”

“ _S_ _limy-!”_

“Besides, stop lying and saying you like Allura, you got over her like last year, right? After you got your big boy crush on Alex Ryder-”

“Shhhhh!!!!” Lance hisses, crawling over and shoving a finger on Pidge’s lips to silence them. “My mama can’t know about the… whatever you called it!” 

“Big Boy Crush,” Hunk supplied. _Baby Be Mine_ started to roll out of the speakers as the first song faded away, the new synth filling the room. 

“Zip it, Hunk!” Lance snapped, barely noticing when Pidge removed his finger from their face, grimacing. “And it’s not like I _forgot_ Allura, I was merely sidetracked by some _person!”_  

“The Linebacker on the Junior team with the- what was it? The ‘tightest ass you’ve ever seen’? I think so-”

“Oh my god,” Lance mumbles, covering his eyes in embarrassment. “You guys are literally the worst. There’s no way I said that crap about Ryder, anyway, he’s _such_ a douche-”

“You said, ‘It doesn’t matter how awful he is if he’s harsh’,” Hunk reminds him, smiling as he watches Lance splutter.

“Further proof I’ve changed! I would _never_ call someone ‘harsh’ now, ugh, that’s so 1983 it’s gross, why did I use to say that-?”

“ _A_ _nyway_ ,” Pidge sighs, twirling the wire of their headset in boredom. “I came over here to study for trig, are we gonna keep listening to this romantic garbage or are we gonna pass Coran’s test?”

“Pass Coran’s test,” Lance mumbles, lazily reaching for his binder. “But I will get the final word - I will ask Allura out, she will say yes, we’ll go on a romantic date, and we will dance to the sweet tunes of _I Just Can’t Stop Loving You_ under the moonlight.”

 

* * *

  

Lance did ask Allura out, she did not say yes, they did not go on a romantic date, and they did not dance to the sweet tunes of _I Just Can’t Stop Loving You_ under the moonlight.

Lance was grumbly for the rest of the week, sulking around and barely cracking a joke. And his friends weren’t being helpful at all, either. Not comforting in the way a friend _should_ be, Lance pondered bitterly, opening his locker and pulling out his textbook sullenly.

“Hey there, reject.”

He let his head drop against his now closed locker. “Not funny, Pidge,” he grumbles.

He looks at Hunk, who gives him a warm smile. “It’s sorta funny dude,” he says, shrugging helplessly. “You can’t even be mad at Allura, she was so nice about it - what did she even say? Pidge-”

Pidge supplies, in what Lance considers the worst English accent he’s heard in his sixteen years of existence, “‘Oh, Lance, I’m really quite flattered, but, erm, I’m not interested. Like, at all. But still, the gesture is quite sweet! I prefer the Smiths over Jackson, but really, I don’t mind, I just don’t think I’m the right one for you.’”

Lance winces, remembering how awkward he had been trying to ask Allura out to the movies ( _E_ _vil Dead II_ had just come out - what better than taking a girl out to a satirical horror flick?) and Allura had smiled gently as she rejected him. His throat closed, and he didn’t look at the rest of the people in the cafeteria as he rushed to sit with his friends, hiding his head in his arms.

“Think of it this way, Lance - you _hate_ the Smiths. Anyone who likes the Smiths over Jackson just isn’t your type, y’know? You just can’t get along with someone who jams out to Morrissey in their spare time,” Hunk tells him, patting his shoulder kindly.

Lance straightens, brightening, and brushing back his hair with his hand. “Yeah! You’re right, Hunk. Allura’s pretty, but I just can’t get along with anyone who listens to the Smiths. It’s probably for the best, right?”

Before either Hunk or Pidge can respond, another voice pops up. “What’s wrong with the Smiths?”

Lance turns to see Keith, the quiet boy from phys ed (who, despite his quiet and broody nature, was the top of the tenth-grade gym class and Lance’s sworn arch rival), looking at him curiously.

The taller boy sputters for a moment, shocked that Keith would even initiate a conversation with him in the first place (Keith raises an eyebrow in response to this), before saying, “Well, Morrissey’s just so… melancholy. It’s boring. There’s no funk.”

“No… funk?” Keith asks, tilting his head to the side in confusion, as if not processing Lance’s words.

“Yeah, _Keith_ , no funk. It’s all piano and depressing guitar and his weird voice. No synth or drums or anything with real rhythm to it. It’s just sad to be sad, y’know? Or maybe since you’re so broody, you’re probably into all that alternative depressing stuff.”

Keith frowns, opening his mouth to retort, when the bell rings, silencing him. “Well, I don’t think you’ve listened to enough Smiths to really get it. See you in gym or whatever.”

As Keith walks away, Lance calls out, “I’m gonna kick your ass at basketball today, hoser!”

Keith glances back, squinting his eyes quizzically. “Okay?!” he responds, disappearing down the hallway.

Lance rolls his eyes. “Ugh, it’s like that guy thinks it’s fun to pretend he doesn’t compete with me every day in phys ed.”

“Maybe cause he _doesn’t_?” Pidge says, and Lance ignores them.

“Probably thinks he’s so _suave_ , listening to Morrissey ‘n shit. Who does he think he is?”

“Lance, we’re almost at Coran’s room, could you please calm down-”

“His stupid mullet- bet he got it done at the barber instead of at home or something. Ridiculous. Who gets their hair cut by professionals, other than, like, Madonna or whatever? So pretentious.”

“Lance, you got your hair done at a barber last month-” Pidge starts, but Lance stops them.

“That was for my birthday; it doesn’t count. Plus, he has had a mullet since last year- that needs _maintenance._ Trust me, I would know-”

“Oh, we remember your failed attempt at a mullet,” Pidge snickers, “It looked so gross. But hey, Keith makes it work, right?” they say innocently.

“Well, doi, he’s Keith,” Lance says absently. “He makes _everything_ work, what an asshole. And the mullet wasn’t a _failure_ , just… uh…” Lance struggled to find a good word to describe the horror that was Lance’s eighth-grade-self trying to cut his long hair into a mullet, and in trying to maintain it, cutting a handful of hair out by accident, leading to his mother shaving his head to a buzz cut.

Hunk and Pidge share a look, signalling something along the lines of _‘We’re gonna be here all day’,_ before Hunk takes Lance by the forearm and pulls him into their trig class for the test.

 

* * *

 

The class stands in a line in front of the gym teacher, a mean-spirited guy called Mr. Sendak with a beer-gut and a sweaty shirt, who’s spitting something about “shirts and skins”, and Lance pales. His binder, for a moment, feels tighter on his chest than it did a few seconds ago. _What about the pinnies?_

The coach counts one, two, one, two, across the line of forty boys. Lance is a one, and he vaguely notices that Keith is a two, as is Hunk.

“Ones are shirts, twos are skins!” Lance lets out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding in, and smiles shakily at Hunk, who gives him a thumbs up. Hunk and Lance always stood either directly next to each other in line or an even distance away from each other so that they would be on different teams - should Lance get picked for skins, he and Hunk quietly pretend that they got each other’s numbers, and nobody cares enough to notice. It’s the little things Lance really appreciates about Hunk, sometimes.

The other team strips their shirts, throwing them aside and grumbling in indignation.

“Don’t you think it’s creepy that a grown man is gonna watch 20 teenagers running around shirtless?” Somebody mumbles from behind him. Murmurs of agreement roll through the group, until Rolo says, “Sure, ‘till you remember that literally no one in this class is buff ‘cept for Ryder, Keith, and Garrett.”

At this, everyone looks over to the group, and honestly, he's right. The three are all different types of attractive, Lance quietly thinks. Alex is muscled in the way many football players were- strong looking biceps and quads, tall in height, with a square jaw. Keith, on the other hand, is short, barely 5’7, with a flat stomach and lean with muscle, as though he ran to and from school on the daily. ( _Stupid_ , Lance thinks _, who works out outside of school when you have phys ed? Show off._ ) Hunk was different, less muscle and more pudge, but that was only what hid an amount of strength people only ever felt through a hug. His arms could combat the strongest players’ on the junior team, Lance is sure of it, the way his biceps would show from under his sleeves. (Hunk was, so to speak, a hunk.)

Rolo nudges him. “Watcha lookin at, queer?” he leers, squinting at him. Lance immediately bristles.

“Nothing,” he hisses. “I’m just… strategizing how to kick their asses. And I’m _not_ a queer,” he mumbles, looking away from Rolo’s smug face.

“Hey,” Rolo says, knocking his shoulder with his fist, drawing Lance’s attention back to him. “You know what they say, right?”

Lance draws his brows together in suspicion. “No,” he responds stiffly, “I don’t.”

Rolo lifts the hem of his shirt for half a second, revealing bandaging across his torso. Lance only has enough time to dazedly think, _that’s not safe_ , before Rolo says, “Takes one to know one, eh?” Lance’s eyes widen in awe, and before he can respond, a whistle blows, signalling the first rotation of teams. “Let’s put that ‘strategizing’ you were doing earlier to use,” Rolo mutters, grinning, and pats him on the back before jogging onto the court.

Lance jogs after him, and he thinks, as he sees Keith take the opposing position to his, _I’m gonna kick his ass_.

 

* * *

 

On the contrary, Lance gets his ass kicked so hard by Keith he would probably feel it into next week.

It was almost painful to see Keith’s grinning, triumphant face as he scores the last basket of their round, winning the game for his team, 39-18. Keith almost never smiled unless he was winning, if the strain on his cheeks was anything to go by. Lance determined that his smile was stupid and goofy looking, and he wanted to crush it to the dirt in tomorrow’s class.

He doesn’t need to see Keith’s stupid face for the rest of the day since gym is his last class. He changes out of his ratty cotton shirt and high waisted shorts in the bathroom, quickly donning his usual baggy shirt tucked into high waisted jeans, along with his dad’s army jacket from his time in Vietnam. He grabs his gym bag and runs to his locker, shuffling his things together, as Hunk and Pidge approach his locker.

“Hey, Lance, you’re still dropping us off, right?” Hunk asks. Lance mumbles a ‘yeah’ in response, slinging his bag over his back.

Pidge barely looks up from their Gameboy when they ask, “How was gym?”

“Fine,” Lance says, too quickly to be true.

Hunk grins at them. “Our team kicked Lance’s team to the dirt.”

“Was Keith on your team?” An excited nod from Hunk. “And Ryder?”

“Yup,” he says, popping his lips on the ‘p’. “They stood no chance.”

“Hey!” Lance cries out indignantly. “We had Rolo, _and_ Jacob, _and_ most importantly - me!”

“You mean, Rolo - the guy so tall he can barely walk without tripping, Jacob, the footballer so high all the time that he can barely count to ten, and you, the guy so out of shape that you skimp on laps?” Pidge says, and Hunk winces in response. They push their way out of the school and make their way to the parking lot.

“Yikes,” Hunk says. “They have a point.”

“No, they do _not._ Ass.”

“If I didn’t have a point, then why’d you lose?”

“Shut up, Pidge!”

He opens the door to the driver’s side of the car (a cruddy blue Volkswagen golf he’d named Shirley), hopping in, hearing Pidge call out “shotgun” and Hunk’s groan of disappointment as he shuffles into the backseat, clutching the headrest. Pidge jumped in, throwing their boots onto the dashboard.

Lance turns the radio on, and tapped his fingers against the wheel to the beat of the music _._ “ _Who coulda thought that a boy like me could come to this…_ ” he muttered along to the music, before being shoved by Pidge and being told to shut up. He rolled his eyes, pulling the car out of the spot and making his way out of the parking lot. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots Keith by his motorcycle, putting on his helmet.

 _What an ass_ , Lance thinks bitterly, looking at the shiny new Harley Davidson. _Who just rides a bike to school?_

He revvs the engine, driving out onto the street and towards Pidge’s house, ignoring Hunk’s reprimand and taking pleasure in the way Keith startles and fumbles with his helmet, turning to Lance’s car with a confused look. Lance turns up the music, rolling his shoulders to the beat of Janet Jackson’s _Control_.

 

* * *

 

Friday gym class was apparently just health class, so there was no way for Lance to take revenge on Keith by kicking his ass at any kind of sport. It was unnerving, listening to Mr. Sendak aggressively yell that, _if you boys have sex, you will die._ He wondered for a moment, if humans were functionally immortal but murdered too often and too horny to realise it. _If someone never gets sick and manages to avoid getting murdered by, like, moving to Canada or something, and never have sex either, will they live forever?_

Thinking about this manages to stifle the awkward air in the room for Lance, and helps him zone out. The coach is in the middle of rambling on about how girls should be avoided at all costs in order to avoid imminent death when the bell rings. The boys of his class shuffle to get their things together more quickly than usual, nearly sprinting out of the class with red faces. Lance hadn’t noticed the diagram of the some rather strange looking human anatomy on the board, almost crudely drawn. He felt his face pale in horror when he noticed the coach glaring at him. He mumbles a goodbye and practically runs out of the classroom, down the hall, and to his locker.

He gets to his locker, only to see Keith standing there. Lance’s eyes narrow. “Keith?”

“Hi,” Keith says coolly, face slightly pink as he looks at Lance. He figures it’s from the crude lecture the coach had given them earlier and brushes it off.

“Uh, you’re kinda blocking my locker dude,” Lance says, staring pointedly. Keith shifts back with a mumbled, “my bad”, and Lance opens his locker to start grabbing his homework for the day. “So, Keith, what brings you to my locker today? Here to gloat about yesterday or something?”

Keith looks startled at this, and pauses for a moment. “Gloat about yester..? Oh! No, no, I completely forgot about that. Uh, it’s something else.” He reaches for his bag, a red shoulder bag, covered in pins and patches for various obscure bands Lance hadn’t heard of. For a second, Lance is irate- Keith didn’t even remember yesterday’s games in gym, the way he completely decimated Lance and managed to get the ball every time Lance blocked him as though he weren’t there. Before he can call him out on being a forgetful ass, Keith holds out a tape to him, saying nothing.

Lance blinks. “It’s a tape,” he says slowly.

Keith huffs. “Well, duh, stupid. I made it, so take it.”

He feels his eyes widen in shock. “You- you made me a mixtape??”

Keith flushes. “No, you idiot! I made a mixtape, like, two months ago, and now I’m giving it to you. Yesterday you said you didn’t like the Smiths, and I thought you just didn’t listen to enough to make a fair judgement, or whatever. Just listen to it, asshole.”

Lance takes the mixtape gingerly, eyeing it like it were a bomb ready to detonate. He takes in Keith’s messy all-caps scrawl in black marker, notating the tape as “ _THE SMITHS MIX - [for Keith]_ ”. The tape looks worn and heavily used, as though Keith listened to it often.

“I’m not gonna listen to this,” he says.

Keith glares, then reaches for the tape. “Then give it back, since you’re going to be such an ass about it-”

Lance immediately uses his height to his advantage, using his long arm to put the tape out of reach of Keith, who grabs at empty air. “Hey, no take-backs! I might not listen to it, but I’m keeping it. For storage or something. Plus you can’t take gifts back once you’ve given them.” It’s a stupid excuse, but Keith isn’t exactly analytical, so he just glares and mutters, “Whatever, weirdo,” before stalking off to his own locker.

Lance feels his face warm as he turns the tape over in his hands. He hears his friends call for him and shoves it to the bottom of his bag where they can’t see it and ask questions about why he has a tape for the Smiths of all bands. When they ask him why he’s so red, he lies and says he could still remember what the health lesson in gym was all about. Hunk gives him a suspicious look (Pidge doesn’t seem to care all that much), so Lance just walks a couple feet ahead to hide his face.

 

* * *

 

Lance almost forgets about the tape by the time he gets home, and when he gets around to doing his English homework, a read on _To Kill a Mockingbird_ with an essay to match, he’s entirely forgotten both Keith and the tape, scrawling his half-hearted essay on a sheet of lined paper.

After some time, he runs out of paper and reaches into his bag to grab some more, groaning as he stretches to reach it. He shoves his hand into the bag, fumbling around with his tongue between his teeth, before his hand hit a small block of plastic. He pulls it out, only to see Keith’s tape, his shitty handwriting on the front in the faded marker. Lance pauses for a moment, before sighing and reaching for his walkman.

“This is stupid,” he says to himself, pushing the tape in and turning on the device, listening to the static and the mechanical whir of the wheels turning on the plastic. “I’m going to hate this.”

He half expects that depressing song- the one with the piano intro that had the lead singing about how much he wanted to sleep (he guessed there was a deeper meaning, but he didn’t care enough to find out) - but instead, the sound of guitar and drums fill his ears.

This one is neither upbeat nor downbeat, the song moving at an even pace. It’s not a particularly _happy_ song, and even though you could argue the instrumentals are upbeat, Morrissey’s voice takes it down to a low, almost sad, begging mood.

“ _You shut your mouth; how can you say I go about things the wrong way?”_

“Uggghhhhh,” Lance groans through the too-long song. “This is so boring! Jesus, how does Keith listen to this crap?”

He nearly turned off the tape, but stopped himself before he could.

“Keith gave this to me as a gift,” he muses out loud. “It would be pretty rude if I didn’t listen all the way through.”

“ _You told him you weren’t even gonna listen to it,_ ” Pidge’s voice sounds in his head.

“Shut it, Pidge, I’m rationalizing,” he snaps.

“Lance, are you talking to yourself _again_?” His sister’s voice rings down the hallway and Lance grimaces.

“No!” he yells back. “You hearing things, Marge? Maybe you should get your ears checked!”

“Shut up, Lance!” she cries, and he grins, twirling his fingers through the wire of his headset.

It’s silent again, save for the sound of one of Morrissey’s sadder songs, and he sighs, turning back to his essay. “At least it’s calm enough for background music,” he mumbles, scratching cursive into the paper, pulling up some bullshit about To Kill A Mockingbird and the symbolism behind the school children.

 

* * *

 

When Monday rolls around, Lance has listened to the tape, front and back, more times than he can count. He’s not sure why- he knows he doesn’t even like it, doesn’t like the vocals especially, the throaty singing style scratching at his nerves and itching at his brain. However, the instrumentals are enough to save the songs, he guesses. Not so good he enjoys himself, but good enough that the songs don’t make him wish death upon himself.

He’s got his headset on while he walks to chem, and he finds himself humming along to _How Soon Is Now_ as he walks in the class, promptly stopping to glare at Keith.

He turns the device off, stuffing it in his bag and replacing it with his notebook and pencil. He’s tapping it on the desk restlessly, only half paying attention to the teacher when he says they’ll be doing a partner assignment, due for that Friday, and that no, they couldn’t pick their partners (after the disaster that was the acids experiment in which he had paired himself with Pidge. He still had the remnants of a burn on his left forearm).

Lance’s mind blanks when the teacher pairs him with Keith, and he stifles a groan. It felt almost like a bad flick, pairing two people who hated each other to work on a science project, one of whom was really good at science and an unpopular nerd (Lance) and the other who was a terrible, jock-y airhead (Keith). What next, was Keith going to give him his letterman and pry him away from his cue cards for a makeout session?

Lance drags his ass out of his chair, picking up his things and trading places with Pidge’s partner, throwing his stuff down on the desk next to Keith.

“Sup, partner,” he drawls, leaning back in his chair to look at Keith.

Keith barely spares him a glance. “Do you want to do the assignment on oxidation or acids and bases?” he asks.

Lance shrugs. “They’re both pretty simple chemical processes - do you want to do rusty metal or acid? That’s the actual choice here.”

He looks frustrated at this. “I don’t know, acids I guess? I don’t even really get how they work but I get it better than the oxidation stuff,” he mutters.

“Alright,” he says, reaching for his textbook. “We need to set up times to meet up to work on this thing; I can’t focus for shit at school and I can’t deal with sitting around and working without breaks for too long.”

Keith tilts his head at this. “You can’t focus in class? But.. your grades are really good.”

Lance squints. “How do you know about my grades?” Keith’s cheeks turn pink at this.

“I, uh, hear you bragging from here sometimes. They’re good, at least to me,” he says, scratching the back of his neck.

“They’re not as good as Pidge’s,” he scoffs. “The kid’s fourteen- supposed to be in eighth grade, but they skipped two grades to get to high school when they were twelve. It’s really weird,” he rambles, before coughing into his fist. “But, uh, thanks.” There’s silence between them, and the chatter of kids around them discussing their projects or whatever parties they happened to be having that week or whatever parties took place over the weekend.

Keith breaks the silence. “I can do Wednesday and Thursday after school? I’ve, um, got track and some other stuff today and tomorrow.”

“That’s fine,” Lance says, twiddling his pencil between his thumb and forefinger. “Do you want to meet at the library on Wednesday?”

“Sure, but is it okay if I get a ride? I’m dropping my bike off at the shop, and the walk is really long from my, uh, my house.” Lance instinctively raises an eyebrow at his hesitation.

“I can, but if it’s super long you owe me for gas,” he teases. Keith, instead of taking the joke for what it is nods. “Yeah, course, I can pay you back for gas,”

“Yeah, course, I can pay you back for gas."

“No, no, dude- it was a joke. Unless you live like, way out of town or something. But even then, it’s cool.”

“Then why would you-” He pauses, relaxing his shoulders. “Whatever,” he mutters, tugging on the fraying threads of his plaid shirt. Lance takes a moment to take in what Keith is wearing, because it’s _horrible_. They live in Arizona, the literal hellscape desert of the United States, and yet Keith is wearing a thick flannel shirt over what looks like a solid black t-shirt, and leather pants ( _leather pants._ In _Arizona_ ) with steel-toed laced up combat boots and thick red socks. Lance notices the leather jacket slung over the chair he’s sitting in, and if that weren’t enough, he’s wearing fingerless leather gloves. The boy is literally asking for a heat stroke. _Is he okay? How is he not boiling hot in all of those clothes?_

 _Well, he’s hot regardless of whether or not he’s got all those layers to you, right?_ his inner Pidge states.

 _Shut up, I’m talking temperature, not aesthetic beauty right now,_ he thinks back aggressively, shushing the invasive voice into silence.

“-re you staring at me like that?”

Lance is brought out of his distraction by Keith’s voice, laced with suspicion. “You’re hot,” he blurts.

In that moment, Lance literally wishes he would combust in on himself, that a black hole would  open up underneath him and swallow him to the depths of Hell. When he looks at Keith, he sees thick brows scrunched together in confusion (they’re clearly filled in to some degree but he doesn’t say anything about that; it looks good enough on him that Lance can forgive what he would otherwise deem an unnecessary amount of effort). “Actually, it’s not that warm? Like, I’m pretty okay right now. Why, am I sweaty or something?” He frowns and touches his forehead.

If Lance weren’t so thankful, he’d whack Keith upside the head for being so oblivious. He feels his mouth slacken slightly, his own eyes narrowing in response before he collects himself. “You’re wearing thick, dark clothes and fucking _leather_ , dude. How are you not boiling right now? It’s almost 87 degrees today.”

Keith shrugs at that. “Dunno, it’s not that hot to me.”

“Christ, guess you’ve gotta keep up with the motorcycle lone-wolf shtick in all aspects, huh?” Lance mutters.

Keith looks like he wants to retort, but stops himself before he can say anything. He grabs his textbook instead, shoving it in his bag along with his notebook and pen. The bell rings then, and he looks at Lance quickly, muttering a quick, “see you in gym”, before stalking out of the class. Lance stares at his leather-clad back in thought, and is only snapped out of his reverie by Pidge, who flicks him behind the ear.

 

* * *

 

“E-31,” Pidge says, around a mouthful of pizza. 

“Aw, man!” Hunk cries, “You sunk my battleship.”

“Hunk, you gotta sink like five of theirs before they find your last one or you’re fucked,” Lance informs him. He takes pride in being a helpful friend. Hunk squints at him, grabbing another slice of cheese pizza and taking a bite sadly.

“You suck, Pidge,” he says, not genuinely. “F-18.”

Pidge grins. “Miss,” they say coolly, and Hunk sighs. “So, Lance,” they start.

“Oh no,” he mumbles, rolling his eyes. He has a bad feeling he knows the topic of this discussion.

“I hear…” they pause for a moment, then continue, “B-12.”

Hunk frowns. “Hit.”

Pidge places the red marker on the spot where they hit Hunk’s battleship, an evil looking grin on their face. Lance shudders at the thought of the look being directed at him, and feels sorry for Hunk in that moment. “Anyway, I hear you’ve got one Mr. Keith, aka ‘Broody McBroodster who gave me a mixtape’ as your chem project partner-”

“Hey, first of all, stop acting like this is some crazy drama, we’re in the same chem class, _you were there when Mr. Alfor gave us the partners_ -”

Hunk holds up his hands. “Woah woah woah- C-14.” “Miss.” “Oh, come on! Anyway- he _gave you a mixtape?_ ”

Lance squawks. “How the hell’d you know about that, Pidge?”

Pidge looks at him like he’s an idiot. “I saw him give it to you, dumbass. Plus, you’ve been listening to it since Friday- don’t think I didn’t notice.”

“Yeah, w-well, whatever! He just wanted me to try out the Smiths, and I did, and they suck!” Lance says defensively, glaring at them.

“Must be why you’ve been listening to them non-stop- A-12-” A resigned huff, then, “Hit.” “- Cool.”

“Dude,” Hunk says, placing a red marker where Pidge attacked and hit his little gray ship, “if Keith gave you a mixtape, does that mean he likes you? That’s like, a super huge signal that someone likes you. B-21.”

Pidge looks bored. “Miss.” Hunk takes a bite of pizza in response, looking despondent at the sea of red on his side of the game.

“It’s not like he made the tape for me, guys,” Lance said, twiddling his thumbs. “He said he just had it and thought I should listen. And this is _Keith_ , we’re talking about. I could literally call the guy hot _to his face_ and he would think I was talking about the temperature.”

“Give him a little more credit than that. I bet he’s not _that_ dense.”

Lance straightens, his back coming off the wall, and he sits cross-legged on his bed, smirking as he leans into his hand. “Wanna bet?”

Pidge’s eyebrow raises at that. “You’re gonna call him hot and see what happens?”

“Nope!” Lance grins. “I already did.”

Hunk drops his Capri sun at that, mouth dropping open. Pidge’s eyes widen, and they tighten their grip on their own drink, squirting a line of juice onto the floor. Lance winces, thinking about how annoying it would be to clean that up, later.

“You did _what_." It’s not a question, because Pidge definitely heard him.

“I called him hot, to his face.”

“No way,” Hunk says slowly, disbelieving.

“Yeah way, dude! And you know what he said?” Lance slouches his shoulders, dropping his smirk and squinting his eyes and drawing his brows together to imitate Keith. “‘ _Actually, it’s not that warm? I’m pretty okay right now._ ’ Then he asked me if he looked sweaty.”

“Oh my god,” Pidge says, before bursting out in cackles. “That is so ridiculous- I cannot believe-”

Hunk is grinning. “Dude, that’s actually kind of cute, isn’t it?” He’s nudging Lance along to admit something they all know out loud, though not forcefully. There’s room for Lance to deny, claim that the idea is absurd, and dismiss it for good.

Lance takes a moment to consider. He remembers the slightly confused look on Keith’s face, the way his lips slightly parted, his dark brows knitted together from the possible accusation that he looked sweaty, his dark hair framing his face with a mullet that Lance _definitely_ wasn’t jealous of, and his pretty, shiny grey-blue eyes.

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “It sorta is.”

 

* * *

 

Knowing that he likes Keith doesn’t really affect Lance’s life or his irritation at Keith in any way, surprisingly enough. He still finds Keith’s terrible clothing choices abhorrent, still does his best to kick his ass in gym (and proceeds to get his ass kicked anyway), he still gets mad that Keith can effortlessly wear a mullet, still gets irritated when he sees Keith with his bike, still still still. 

It’s just that that stillness is now permeated with a, “wow, that’s sort of cute, the way he scrunches his nose before he throws the dodgeball directly into my face”, or “those gym shorts need to be made longer, I don’t think those quads should be legal”, or even “man, I really want to run my fingers through his mullet, even if it looks kind of greasy.”

It’s pretty stupid, honestly, but generally harmless enough that Lance can push it aside. Tuesday passes without incident, and since Lance has been so focused on not focusing on Keith, more than half the assignment is done by the end of the chem period.

Almost too quickly, it’s Wednesday, and Lance remembers he’s dropping off Hunk and Pidge before taking Keith to the library to work on the project. They all walk to his car, the normal conversation slightly stunted with a new wheel thrown into the mix. As Lance opens up the driver’s side door, he expects to hear Pidge call out shotgun and hop in the front like they usually do.

Instead, he hears them say, “Hey, Keith, why don’t you sit in Shirley’s front seat? Bein’ the newbie and all.”

Lance turns the ignition key almost too aggressively. _Ass_ , he thinks bitterly.

“Shirley…?” Keith’s confused voice can be heard, and Lance forces the image of Keith’s scrunchy brows and pouty lips from his head. _Not now_.

“The car,” he calls. “Get in, losers, Keith and I’ve got a project to do, and Hunk’s got sax practice.”

Keith hops into the passenger seat, his other two friends sitting in the back. (Pidge looks at him innocently through the rearview mirror as Keith fumbles with his seatbelt. Lance mouths _t_ _raitor_ at them, and they grin.)

As they pull out of the lot, Hunk says, “Dude, turn on the radio, it’s dead silent in here.”

Lance can’t help but agree, so he flicks the switch on the radio port, turning the dial to reach a preferred station. Nothing but static.

He fiddles with the controls for a minute before cursing. “The damn signal’s completely down, must be the overcast or something.”

Keith suggests, “If the radio’s down, why don’t you just put in a tape?”

“Oh, yeah!” Pidge pipes in, and Lance stifles a groan. “Tell you what, Lance got a brand new cassette last week and hasn’t shut up about it. You know, he listened to it non-stop _all_ weekend. Why don’t you pull it out, Lance?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, asshat,” he mutters, ignoring Keith’s bewildered look.

“You know, the Jackson tape!”

“Oh!” Lance says, laughing awkwardly as though to pretend he didn’t aggressively shut down Pidge’s seemingly relaxed suggestion. He wished, in that moment, that Keith was friends with Pidge because _then he would know what it was like to be friends with a literal demon_. But then, he would also know that Lance kind of thought he was cute, if not a huge jackass.

(Plus, he’d heard rumours that Keith was a huge conspiracy theorist. Pidge had tried to hack Russian comms three days ago, and he wasn’t ready to see what kind of combination that would make.)

He reaches into his backpack, situated beside Keith’s legs (very lean, he notes), and reaches in to grab the tape and slip it into his radio. It picks up where it last left off, at the start of _Billie Jean_ , and he whoops with excitement. He hadn’t listened to the tape since Thursday evening, having spent the entirety of the last week since Friday listening to the Smiths. (He just couldn’t get a good enough read on their music and whether or not he liked them - sue him for it.)

Even though he, Pidge, and Hunk are all dancing or singing or doing _something_ that indicated they enjoyed the music, Keith was characteristically silent, looking at his boots and rolling his shirt between his fingers absent-mindedly.

He doesn’t mention it until after he pulls into Pidge’s driveway, watching as Hunk clambers out after them. _Some mechanics project_ , he remembers vaguely, and by habit calls out for Pidge to say hi to their mom for him. They tell him to use protection. Dick.

They’re driving to the library, Lance unapologetically singing to _Human Nature,_ when he notices Keith’s bored look again, and he calls over the music, “What, don’t like Jackson or something, you jock?” 

Keith startles. “Not really? It isn’t my thing,” he admits, and he has the audacity to almost look sheepish about it.

Lance suddenly turns down the volume. _“What?!”_ he cries out indignantly. “How can you - it’s _Jackson_ ,” he emphasizes as if that changes anything.

“So..? I don’t like pop, big deal.” He looks defensive now.

“What about… What about, I don’t know, Billy Joel?” Lance asks. He needs to find common musical ground between them. He can’t drive Keith around with the knowledge that none of the music he plays will be enjoyable between them.

Keith shrugs. “He’s okay. I don’t think I’ve heard more than like, two songs?”

Lance pulls into the library and kills his engine, grabbing his bag and hopping out. Keith slowly follows.

“Have you heard of Diana Ross?” he asks, expecting an upturned nose and a scoff. He’s not sure why he asked, Keith _said_ he doesn’t like pop, and he definitely wouldn’t like Diana Ross’ brand of pop and R&B.

Keith, instead, stutters and says, “N-no, I’m, uh, not into her stuff either.” He’s not meeting Lance’s eyes.

“Holy shit!” Lance hisses, excited out of his mind. “The punk rock hessian is into fucking _Diana Ross_ -”

“Shut up!” Keith snaps, face flushed. “I _don’t,_ stop being a dickweed, you dickweed!”

“Holy shit, I bet you jam out to _Ain’t No Mountain High Enough_ while you fix up your bike or something,” Lance cackles, ecstatic at the idea.

“Oh my god, eat my shorts. I’m not even punk, I’m alternative,” he defends.

Lance waves his hands in the air dismissively. “Who cares? All that matters is that you like Diana Ross. This is literally the best day of my life. What’s your favourite jam, Mr. Supreme?”

There’s silence while they walk into the library, and then he mumbles something under his breath.

“What was that, Keith? I know it’s a library, but I couldn’t hear you,” Lance teases.

Keith sighs with resignation. “ _Work That Body_ ,” he says, and Lance splutters. A hissed _shush_ can be heard, and Lance quiets down.

“Oh my god. Oh my _god._ Please tell me you listen to that while working out.” (The image is enough to make Lance’s face warm, and he forces it aside. It’s not the time to think about how pretty Keith looks embarrassed, or how he must look, sweaty and flushed after a long workout. It’s time to make fun of Keith for his unexpected music taste.)

Keith sits down, laying his bag on the ground. “Lance, can we please work on this project?” His face is tinged red.

Lance grins, sitting across from him. “Sure thing, stud,” he says sarcastically, flipping his textbook open. “Ready to finish this project a day early?” 

Keith only grunts, still embarrassed, but he pulls out his notebook anyway and refusing to meet Lance’s eyes.

 

* * *

 

It’s a boring four hours following, but they manage to get the project done. By the end of it, Lance is tired and his chest hurts, and he just wants to go home and sleep, listening to Morrissey’s annoying voice to lull him out of consciousness. 

Keith doesn’t look much better. The guy wasn’t really kidding when he said he didn’t get the material, because he had to reteach it to himself as they worked on the assignment. That probably got them to spend an extra hour working on the project.

“What did you even do on the test?” Lance had asked, watching Keith struggle to remember the formula for the reaction.

Keith gave him half a shrug in response. “S’not a biggie, I just, dunno, didn’t finish. I don’t think I passed it.”

Lance didn’t say anything for a moment. “What’re you gonna do after you graduate?” he asked, instead of directly commenting on the idea of Keith failing chem.

“Well, if I graduate,” he started (Lance didn’t comment how he changed the ‘after’ to an ‘if’, but felt a twinge in his stomach at Keith’s lack of confidence in his success), “I wanted, since I was a kid, to be an astronaut. On one of those Apollo missions sort of? But the last one was when I was one, and you need to be a really smart scientist to do that kind of stuff. I’m better with my hands. I’m gonna try and go to flight school, maybe fly commercial. If I can’t do that, I’ll just do trades at the bike shop Rolo’s dad owns. But, um, yeah. What about you?”

Keith looked sheepish at having said so much in one go, and he seemed too tired to say much else. Lance thought it was kind of sad that Keith wouldn’t get to do the Apollo missions, or probably ever get to space, just cause he couldn’t do an equation on acids and bases.

“Hmm, I kinda wanted to do the same thing as a kid- going to the moon or to space, but I’d miss my family too much. I’m gonna major in astrophysics or something. Closest way to get to space without leaving Earth, if you catch my drift,” he’d said nonchalantly, and Keith nodded in response, saying nothing as he turned back to his book.

 

* * *

 

They’re in his car now, the finished project tucked in Lance’s folder to be handed in on Friday. Keith is strapping his seatbelt on, his movement making the car sway slightly.

“Where d’you live, man?” he asks, turning the ignition. Keith stiffens, almost unnoticeably, before he mumbles out an address. Lance squints but doesn’t press.

It’s quiet, nothing but the dark sky and the streetlights and Shirley’s broken lights illuminating the path to the street Lance barely knew existed. The whir of the engine and the hum of the air conditioning, the _whoosh_ of air that washes over his face, makes Keith’s hair billow slightly - it’s the only noise infiltrating the calm quiet of the car. That, and Lance’s anxious tapping against the wheel, and the sound of fabric rolling together as keith rubs flannel between his thumb and forefinger.

“Hey, uh,” Keith starts, interrupting the quiet of the car with a low voice, “you never ended up listening to that Smiths tape I gave you, right?”

There’s a hint of expectation in his voice. Maybe if he had asked earlier, Lance would have snorted. _No way, dude_ , he’d have said, _I don’t listen to that lame shit._

He doesn’t know how Keith would have reacted to that, so instead, he says, “Yeah, sorta.” It’s a half lie. He’s pretty sure that the sound of their songs is ingrained in his brain irreversibly, the style of guitar etched into his frontal lobes, the drums stabbed into his hippocampus, the voice scribbled into his brain stem. “It wasn’t really my thing, didn’t even finish the tape all the way through.”

Keith sounds disappointed when he says, “Oh, okay. That’s cool.”

They’re pulling up onto the street and Keith nervously blurts, “Uh, you could just drop me off here.”

Lance looks at him quizzically. “What? Dude, we’re pretty close to your house, I can drop you off near the front-”

“No, it’s fine. I just- my folks don’t like when I go out with people. They’re okay if I’m alone, think I’m smoking or something, and I usually am anyway,” he rambles. Lance had noticed the smell of cigarettes earlier, when Keith first got into the car, how when he said he was ‘going to the bathroom’ at the library he left the whole building, only to come back looking relaxed and smelling of tobacco. “It’s just, uh, easier for me to walk the block instead of getting a talk. If they see people they think I’m doing some hard drugs or whatever, they’re really strict on that ‘Just Say No’ thing Reagan’s wife has been pushing.”

Lance takes a second to process that. “So you don’t have people over? Like, ever?” he asks, bewildered at the idea of living without having friends in or around his house. His mother practically treats Hunk like a second son, and almost overfed Pidge once when they’d dared to say, “Ugh, I haven’t eaten anything today" within earshot of Lance's mother.

“Not really, unless they’re family friends,” Keith says. “They usually don’t have kids, and I usually stick to my room when they come ‘round. Or I have to babysit.”

Lance rests his hands on the wheel of his car, staring idly before he starts giggling stupidly. Keith looks at him apprehensively. “What?” he snaps.

“It’s just,” Lance chuckles, “I literally cannot picture you with kids. I have three little siblings, and I know the type that’s good with kids.” He points his thumb at himself, grinning widely. “I can imagine you letting a toddler cook. Like, on a stove and everything.”

Keith huffs at that. “Uh, no way. I’m great with kids.”

Lance raises an eyebrow. “Really, now.”

“Yeah, I am!” Keith defends, but at Lance’s pointed look, shrinks back. “Okay, not, like, _that_ good. I’m okay with kids.” He picks at a thread on his black shirt. “Might’ve accidentally dropped a baby _once_ , but she was okay,” he mutters, before looking up to grin at Lance. His smile is lopsided and goofy looking, eyes crinkling in the corners, and it makes Lance’s chest constrict. If his responding laugh is half as breathy as he feels, he must look like an idiot.

There’s a lull now, as Lance can’t find a good enough response to that. Keith reaches for his bag, and Lance says, “Hold on, hold on.” Keith pauses to look at him, cocking his head to the side. “Um, tomorrow, after school - Pidge has band and Hunk is going on a date with his girlfriend, Shay, and, uh, I know you said you were free and I didn’t really have anything planned, so I was wondering if you wanted to watch Evil Dead II with me? At the theatre by Cross Street.”

Keith’s eyes are wide, and he looks like a deer in the headlights. “Uh….” he says dumbly (cutely), before coughing and straightening his posture. “Y-yeah! Sure, that’s, er, that’s cool. I can, uh, do that.”

Lance grins, watching the way Keith watches _him_ , and says, “Cool! Cool, so it’s a plan. It doesn’t go that long so we can like, drive around town, too, if that’s fine. I think the weather’s supposed to be good.” (Okay, so maybe the ending to that was a little weak, but he still _asked_ so frankly, Lance is okay with it.)

“Okay, that sounds… fun,” Keith says, as though _fun_ isn’t the word he’s looking for. “I’ll, uh, see you tomorrow. In chem. And gym. And then by your locker, I guess.” He looked pink. Lance stared at him until he spluttered out an, “Uh, bye!”, almost frantically grabbing his bag and getting out of the car, shoving his hands into his pockets and walking down the road to a dimly lit house down the street. Lance watches his retreating form before pulling out of the street and back onto the main road. He feels a grin on his face, and he fumbles for a tape, still lodged into his walkman, barely glancing at the messy black marker on the front as he pushes it into Shirley’s stereo.

 

* * *

 

Thursday’s gym class ended with Keith’s team losing, but he had still been the last one standing on his side of the court, before Alex Ryder gave him a hard facial. The ball smacked straight into Keith’s face, and he stumbled backwards, barely managing to stay standing. He clutches his face, tilting it back, before calling out an unsteady, “I’m fine.”

“Boy, you’ve got a nose bleed. You need to get to the nurse. Ryder!” Sendak snaps, drawing the triumphant looking douchebag’s attention to him. “Watch where you’re throwing the ball next time.”

Ryder smirks to his friends. “Bet the queer liked the view,” he snickers, flexing his arm and laughing. Lance is pretty sure he sees red, and suddenly his entire chest is warm and he feels _furious_ because he _hates_ that word and he wants to reach over and tear Ryder’s stupid arm from his body and feed it to him. He opens his mouth to say something he would definitely regret later, but feels a large hand grasp his forearm and tug. It’s Rolo, who leans down and whispers, “S’not worth it, narbo,” dragging him away from the group. Lance struggles, but Rolo’s got a good grip that doesn’t let him go. Before he can verbally protest, Sendak’s voice calls at him from the other side of the gym.

“McClain!” he snaps. “Get him to the infirmary in one piece, will you? Boys, regroup for the next match!”

Lance walks over, shrugging off Rolo’s pat on the shoulder and standing next to Keith.

“Can you walk?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Keith insists, but he still sways when he walks over to the double doors leading out of the gymnasium.

As soon as they’re in the hallway, away from curious eyes and sneers of Ryder’s stupid posse, Keith holds onto his bicep for support. He’s not looking at Lance, instead holding his head back and pressing his yellow gym shirt to his face.

_Right, so I have a shirtless boy with a bloody nose, grabbing my bicep - that’s cool._

“You okay?” Lance asks quietly, slowly leading Keith to the Nurse down the hallway, in the office.

“Mm,” he grunts. He nearly trips over his own ratty gym shoes, and Lance steadies him, a hand on his shoulder to keep him from falling. Keith’s grip had tightened somewhat on his way down, but he didn’t let up as they continued walking. It was too tight, almost uncomfortably so, but he didn’t want to mention it in case Keith let go.

Turns out, it didn’t matter. They got to the office, and a tired looking lady with cat-eye glasses ushered Keith to the nurse’s office, dismissing Lance to go back to class.

He did, reluctantly. _I hope he doesn’t have a concussion_ , he thinks idly, _I was looking forward to today._

 

* * *

 

He didn’t have a concussion, because thirty minutes and a change of clothes later, Keith is by his locker, a white bandage on his nose. He looks as though he had been waiting for Lance to show up.

“I don’t have a concussion,” he says, “but I have to wear this stupid bandage for the rest of the day. I look like a complete dork.” He looks sullen.

Lance shrugs. “Well, as long as you’re still good on the movie, I don’t care.”

He says it as nonchalantly as possible, but there’s still a question in the air. There’s still an opportunity for Keith to dismiss his offer, to say _no I’m not feeling that great and I’m going home._

“‘Course I’m still coming,” Keith scoffs, like the idea of him _not_ going to see a comedy movie with Lance on a Thursday afternoon is ridiculous.

To be honest, him going at all is sort of ridiculous, at least to Lance. If you had told him a week ago that Keith was going to be watching _Evil Dead II_ with him, Lance would have laughed in your face and said something along the lines of going with Allura instead.

“Oh! Rad,” he says with a nod. “The movie starts in, like, thirty minutes, so whenever you’re ready?”

Keith nods, picking his bag up off the ground where it was resting previously and following Lance out the school and to his car.

“I’ve been looking forward to seeing this movie _forever_ , but I’ve never got around to it. I was actually going to see it last weekend, but..” Lance shrugs, not finishing his statement. He flicked on the air conditioning, appreciating the cool breeze on his face.

“What happened?” Keith asks, curiously.

“I asked Allura Arusan out on a date, and she rejected me,” he sighs. At this, Keith’s face is blank, and Lance wonders what he’s thinking. Probably something along the lines of, _well, duh, she’s a senior and you’re a slimy junior._

“Does she like someone else over you?” he asks, which Lance doesn’t expect.

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

“Shiro.”

“Oh.” Keith frowns. “I was gonna say somethin’ like, ‘Oh, her loss,’ or, ‘Bet the guy she picked wasn’t _that_ great,’ but the thing is - Shiro is really nice.”

Lance’s heart stutters at the idea of Keith saying anything along the lines of _her loss_ (implying that _Allura_ was the one missing out, not him, a radical idea to begin with). “Oh, yeah, he’s great. I can’t really be mad at her for liking him. Plus, she’s a senior. I’m not really sure what I was thinking.”

“You were probably thinking, ‘Damn, she’s hot, I’m gonna ask her out to see a satirical horror flick’.” His impression of Lance is terrible and inaccurate, and Lance tells him so, opening the door to his car and clambering out, Keith following a couple steps behind. “Okay, but it _was_ what you were thinking, right?” he questions, squinting through the lowering sun at him. It glares from the west, splashing orange light on Keith’s face, the shadows red and burning. Lance, for a moment, forgets the question.

“Well,” he says, breathless, “ _yeah_ , but that’s not the point!”

“That’s exactly the point, dumbass!” Keith laughs, and Lance finds that he’s laughing too, even as they buy tickets from a bored looking teenager in the booth in front of the theatre.

Before the movie starts, Keith turns to Lance and says - “Don’t get too bummed out that she said no, y’know-” he stuffs popcorn in his mouth- “I think you’ll have no trouble getting a girl if you stick to someone in our grade.”

Lance knows Keith says it like it’s fact, and that makes the flush on his face all the stronger. He thanks the Lord that the theatre is so dark, and runs a hand down his face. He’s saved from having to respond by the sound of the movie’s music starting. He looks at Keith, sparing a glance, and sees that he’s brushed his hair to the side to see the screen better.

 _Cute_ , he thinks. _Shut up_ , he thinks.

 

* * *

 

“When she ate the eyeball, I fucking _lost it_ ,” Lance cackles, reaching at Keith’s sad remainder of popcorn to steal some.

Keith snorts, moving the popcorn out of reach (impossible, Lance is three inches taller than him easily), and says, “What about the fact that he had a chainsaw? _For a hand_??” 

“Jesus, that would be horrible in real life. How would you even do anything?” he asks, trying to picture such an agonizing life style.

“You’d never have trouble cutting stuff,” he points out. “Like pizza, or cake.”

Lance waves his hand in the air. “True, but you’d never be able to jerk it again.”

“Ugh, gross!” Keith gags at the idea. “Dude, he still has his left hand!” he yells, shoving Lance’s shoulder and clutching his popcorn bag tighter. He reaches in to find nothing, and tosses it in the trash. “You ate all my popcorn, you veg,” he whines, frowning at Lance.

“Dude, I’m broke as shit, I was definitely gonna mooch your food,” he says, getting in the car. “Ready for a drive? I’m thinkin’ the mountain, you can see the sky really nice from there,” he says casually, as if the place isn’t titled _Makeout Mount_ , bagging on the idea that Keith doesn’t know that.

Keith doesn’t seem to know that. “That’s cool. Is it secluded?” he asks.

Lance cocks his head in response. “Uh, yeah? Why?” he asks, voice laced with suspicion.

“Well,” he says, reaching into his bag, “We don’t gotta or anything like that, ‘Just Say No’ as Mrs. Reagan would say, but-”

“Holy shit!” Lance whisper-yells. “You have _crack cocaine in my car?!_ ”

“ _What?!_ No, you idiot! It’s weed!” he whispers back, waving a bag of what looks like oregano at him. “Do you think I go around with pure crack in my bag or something?”

“Please tell me you haven’t done crack.”

There’s a pause, as if Keith is processing the question and it’s stupidity, and he goes, “ _No_ , I have not done crack, dexter, just some doobies here and there. Do you want to or not? It’s okay if we don’t.”

If Lance didn’t know any better, he’d have said that Keith was nervous. But no dude that carried around weed in his backpack was going to be that nervous, and Lance knew better, so therefore, Keith was not nervous.

Nancy Reagan’s face seems to appear in his head. “ _Just Say No!”_ she said, her curly bob bouncing as she enunciates the _no_ , and Lance squinted. “Fuck off, Reagan,” he mutters. “Hell yeah I wanna do a doobie!” he says, louder, more confident. Keith chuckles.

“You don’t _do_ a doobie, smart alec. You smoke one.” He makes a motion, two fingers by his mouth. He sucks in air from nothing, and blows, lips puckered. “Like that.”

“Uh-huh,” Lance says, still staring at Keith’s mouth. He drags his eyes up. “Like that.”

“We should go to the mountain,” Keith says, voice low. “By the time we get there, it'll be dark.”

“Uh-huh,” Lance repeats, and he drives, refusing to look at Keith the rest of the way there. He taps against the wheel to stim out his anxiety, to a beat he can’t remember (to some stupid Smiths song at the back of his head), and Keith rolls the leather of his jacket between his thumb and forefinger. Lance listens to the rough noise of skin against leather as he drives, of the A.C. whirring, of the tires rolling against a badly paved road.

 

* * *

 

He parks. As Keith predicted, it’s dark outside, stars visible without the artificial light blocking their shine.

“We should do this outside, so the car won’t smell,” he says lamely, unlocking his car door. Keith shrugs and grabs his bag, following him outside.

The air is crisp and cooler than he expects for Arizona, but he doesn’t mind. Keith apparently does, given by his shiver.

“Dude,” Lance says, bewildered.

“What?” Keith questions, rubbing his hands together.

“You’re _cold?_ ” he cries.

“Well, yeah! And you’re not?”

“It’s like, 65 degrees. And you’re wearing like three layers. It’s _Arizona._ ”

“Shut up,” he mutters, reaching for his bag that’s rested on the hood of his car. “You ready, nerd?”

Lance watches carefully as Keith fiddles with the small pieces of paper, tapping out a thin line of the green stuff onto it. “Only one,” he says, rolling it together quickly enough that Lance questions the _here and there-_ dness of Keith’s doobie habits, “you still gotta sober up and drive home. Hold this,” he instructs, passing the rolled up blunt to Lance to hold, before reaching for a lighter. He flicks the flame alive, and takes back the cig carefully, lighting the end on fire. Almost immediately, the smell hit Lance and he gagged.

“Remember what I told you earlier?” Keith asks.

 _Yes_. “No,” he lies. “Show me again.”

Keith does. It’s weird, watching him inhale through the joint. He separates his lips, popping them and squinting his eyes, before he shakily breathes out white smoke, coughing towards the end. There’s a moment of still quiet, and Lance watches his shoulders relax and his eyes close. He quickly opens them and almost shoved the blunt in his direction. A lot of it is gone already, so he figures Keith must be really nervous to have taken such a long drag. Whatever, the less for him means the less high he needs to be on the drive home. He takes the blunt carefully between his thumb and forefinger, lacking the casual finesse of Keith’s two pronged hold on it just a moment ago.

“Careful,” Keith murmurs, leaning back on the hood of the car. Lance takes a small toke, gagging and coughing out the smoke almost immediately. He hears Keith laugh and he glares, pulling back when Keith reaches to take it from him.

“No, no,” he says, “I got it, man.”

He tries again, more slowly this time. He breathes it out shallowly, struggling not to cough. He does anyway, feeling awkward and stiff, but it’s infinitely worse when he feels a warm hand on his back, pressed between his shoulder blades.

“Too stiff,” Keith says. “Relax.”

Lance nods, lowering his shoulders and taking a deep breath of clean air. “Yeah, m’kay.”

“Pass it.” Keith takes it, bringing it to his lips again. Lance watches the way his eyes flutter shut, lashes brushing his cheeks, and he hears his own breath catch. “You good?” Keith asks.

“Uh-huh. Pass.” He feels Keith watching him this time, so he moves slowly, refusing to meet his eyes; the cycle continues.

It goes on for some fifteen minutes until all that’s left of the blunt isn’t usable. Keith flicks the roach to the dirt. “How’d’you feel?” he asks, looking at Lance from sleepy looking eyes. He blinks owlishly, and Lance sees that his eyes are slightly red-rimmed. Keith probably ended up smoking three-quarters of the blunt, having taken long drags in contrast to Lance’s short ones.

“I feel… really, really good. Like, super calm,” he slurs, leaning back onto his elbows.

“Mmm…” Keith hums, following his lead. “Th’stars ‘re pretty.”

“Sure are,” he agrees, staring at the twinkling lights above them in awe. “How many do you think there _are_?” he asks.

“A whole lot. Tons. Bazillions.”

“ _Gazillions_ , I bet.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Mm.. probably a couple’a zeroes or something.”

“Right.”

Lance looks at the stars, staring in wonder. He feels that his mouth is hanging open ( _You’ll catch flies_ , his mother would say), but he’s too dazed to do anything about it. He tries to pick out the constellations, tries to draw images with the stars. It’s easy, because there are so many, but _hard_ , because nothing he makes has any significance. He ends up with something resembling a frog and starts to giggle. “Froggy,” he murmurs lightly. He looks at the ground for a moment, sees a black puddle that reflects the stars almost perfectly, and he wonders if eyes could do the same. He looks up to Keith to check, only to find Keith watching him as well. His lips are pursed, gaze hooded. They hold the stare for a moment.

“What’re you lookin at?” Lance whispers. “Is there something on my face? If there is, you should say so. It’s rude to leave people hangin’ like that. With something on their face.”

“There’s nothing on your face,” Keith informs him. He takes in a deep breath. “It’s too quiet. I’m gonna turn on the radio. You got any tapes?”

“‘Course I got tapes, dummy,” he laughs. “Who doesn’t got tapes?”

Keith smiles, reaching in through the passenger side window to fiddle with the stereo. _I love music_ , he thinks happily. _I can’t wait to hear what plays._

‘- _W_ _hen you say it’s gonna happen “now”, well, when exactly do you mean?’_

Lance takes it back. He could wait a thousand years if he didn’t have to hear that. Keith’s head pokes back out of the car. The steady guitar continues to play through their wide eyed staring match. Then, the shorter boy grins, ear to ear. It’s not as pained as it is in gym class after a victory, the strain smoothed down by his high.

“You said you don’t like the Smiths,” he says, taking a step towards Lance.

“I don’t,” he breathes.

“You said-” he takes another step- “that you didn’t listen to the tape.”

“I didn’t.”

“This is the ninth song on the tape, you’d have had to listen to eight to get here. Plus, it’s in the middle of the song.” Keith’s shit eating grin is unbearable.

“Shut up, I don’t like the Smiths,” he says, running out of excuses. “Y’can’t… you can’t dance to the Smiths,” he says, settling on that.

“Do you have to be able to dance to a song to like it?” Keith asks, tilting his head. He’s stopped moving forward, and Lance thanks all the gods above for it.

“Yup, and for a song to be danceable, it’s gotta be up-beat. Morrissey isn’t… he’s not that,” he says.

“You could dance to any upbeat song, right?” Keith asks, leaning against the car, a hand on his hip.

His palms sweat. He knows the next part and he doesn’t like it. “Uh-huh.”

“Well, if the next song is up-tempo, you gotta prove it.”

“It’s not gonna be, if it’s the Smiths.” It _is_ and Lance knows it. He knows the next song starts with upbeat guitar and upbeat drums and happy-ish lyrics and he hates that he knows that. He hates the way Keith beams at him, looking absolutely _pleased_ with himself. _Dick_ , he thinks.

“Ri-ight,” Keith drawls. Then he hears it- the guitar riff, and that _voice,_ and he hates everything.

_Punctured bicycle..._

(‘Course, it had to be _this_ song, of all of them.)

“C’mon,” Keith pushes, not unkindly. “Dance.”

So Lance does. And it’s terrible because he’s still buzzed and a little loopy and overthinking everything, his movements too loose, very off beat and nearly incompetent looking. He’s lanky, not like that helps him in any way. If anything, it’s worse as a direct result of his too-long limbs. He snaps to the beat, and then Keith is laughing and he’s flushing red and warm.

“Nope, nope, I’m not dancing alone anymore, this is the worst-”

“No, no, please-” Keith stifles a laugh behind his hand- “You’re, uh, really good at that… that thing you’re doing.”

“Who said I was stopping?” Lance says, and now he’s the one grinning, grabbing Keith’s wrists and tugging him forward. Keith stumbles and nearly lands face first against Lance’s chest. Lance is thankful, then, for the flannel, because if his hands had to touch Keith’s bare wrists, he would have felt how warm and clammy they were.

“What’re you doing?” he all but shrieked, trying to tug back, but Lance tightened his hold.

“I’m gonna teach you,” he starts, shifting so that he’s dancing again, “watch, do this with your legs.” He puts one leg forward, and Keith puts its opposite back. He does the same with his other leg, allowing Keith to follow through. Then, it’s Keith’s turn to step forward and for Lance to step back. “Yeah, like that!”

He’s laughing, because damn if Keith isn’t one of the worst dancers he’s ever met, stepping on his toes (which fucking _hurts,_ those are steel-toe combat boots), movements stiff and awkward and plain bad, as if he’d done nothing with his legs outside of walking, running, and kicking.

They’re close, barely a foot apart, Lance’s hands still clasped around his limp wrists, movements in sync until the song suddenly stops, and the next song begins, slow and sad piano with slow, sad lyrics. It’s Lance’s least favourite song on the tape, and Lance is hungry (it’s the weed, he thinks, remembering how he read somewhere that weed made you really hungry), and they’re really close now, foreheads almost touching, Lance’s hands grabbing Keith’s wrists. They stop dancing, and they breathe as though slightly out of breath. Lance can see Keith’s eyes really well from here, the way there are flecks of blue that scatter across the iris, how his pupils are wide-

Keith twists his wrists smoothly, forcing Lance to drop them. He feels disappointed, and readies himself to take a step back, to pretend that he couldn’t smell the cigarette on Keith’s breath, the strange smell of his hair gel, when he feels rough leather and calloused fingers against his palm. Keith is _holding his hands_ , and holy shit if this isn’t the giddiest he’s ever felt.

Keith is leading him to the car, opening up the backseat and pushing Lance to sit, and then he’s sitting on his thighs, and _oh my god, I’m so high right now it’s crazy, this cannot be real_ -

“Wait,” he breathes, before Keith can get his face too close again. “Wait, Keith. Buddy.”

Keith flinches, eyes widening in panic. “Wait, are you not..? Oh my god. I’m- uh, I’m so sorry, I’ll move, I’ll-”

“No, no.” Lance tugs Keith back after he tries to escape from Lance’s lap. “If we’re gonna, um, whatever, I need to tell you something. It’s important.”

“Important enough to stop in the middle of a- a bonding moment?” Keith asks with a squint.

Lance nods, swallowing. “Super important. Mega important. The most important thing since midterms. In my life. _La cosa más importante-_ ”

“Lance,” Keith says. “Stop stalling. What is it?”

He breathes in, before saying, “I’m a boy.”

Keith looks taken aback. “Well, yeah. I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.” He gestures vaguely at Lance’s legs. “Why, is you being a boy problem? Is liking boys a problem?” His eyebrows are narrowed together in worry, and Lance reaches up to smooth the crease.

“No, Keith- _mi amigo_ -” he takes Keith’s hand, uses it to shift aside the collar of his sweater and press it against the thick strap of his binder. “I’m a boy.”

“Oh,” Keith said numbly. He doesn’t try to move his hand, so Lance moves it for him.

“You.. you still think I’m a boy, right?” he asks, because he needs to make sure.

“Well, duh. You said you’re a boy, and I believe you,” Keith says after a moment’s pause. His eyes are sparkling.

Lance smiles, unable to hold it back. It’s so wide it almost hurts, but he doesn’t care. “A hundred percent?” he murmurs, barely noticing as the song switches over again.

_‘Good times, for a change…’_

_Good timing,_ Lance muses.

“A thousand percent,” Keith retorts. “Plus, you’re like five inches taller than me, so there’s not really much I can say.”

“Five?” he questions, leaning forward.

“Uh, yeah. Th-The boots add a couple inches.” He looks embarrassed, eyes looking aside and lips pursed, and it’s really, _really_ cute.

“That’s so cute,” he informs him, moving his hand to underneath his chin.

“Shaddup,” Keith tells him, quiet. They’re barely an inch apart. Lance accidentally bumps his nose against Keith’s, who says, “ow”, wincing and reaching up to touch the bandage.

Lance helps him take it off. There’s a light bruise on the bridge of his nose, but not much else. “Guess we gotta be careful, right?” he says, using his fingers to tilt Keith’s face to the side. He closes his eyes, and closes the remainder of the distance carefully, tentatively.

Keith isn’t what he imagined his first kiss to be. He pictured something big and dramatic, with a loud ballad by Jackson and a girl with long hair and a pretty skirt, with puffy lips and big eyes and soft hands. Maybe the kiss would have had tongue, or something equally gross that would feel better in the moment.

Keith’s thin, chapped lips slot against his and press, hesitant and showing a slight lack of conviction. The leather of his gloves scratch his face, his calloused thumbs pressed to his cheeks. His eyes are scrunched, not closed, and he’s just as terrible at this as Lance is. It’s endearing, in a way.

They pull apart after what feels like an eternity (barely five seconds), and stare at each other. Keith’s eyes are _huge,_ and Lance is sure he sees stars dancing in them.

“Was that good?” Keith asks, breathless. _I did that_ , Lance thinks excitedly.

“It was terrible. But I loved it. C’mere, I wanna do that again~”

 

* * *

 

They do, until they’re both completely sober an hour later, all kissed out, Keith’s head resting on Lance’s shoulder. His breath ghosts across Lance’s neck and Lance shivers at the feeling. The tape had run out of songs to play too long ago, stopping at _Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now_ , finishing the tape with a click.

“We gotta get home,” Keith murmurs. He’s fisting the fabric of Lance’s sweatshirt in his hand, wringing it. “Your mom is gonna be worried.”

“I know, but I’m comfy,” he whines, running his hands through Keith’s awful gel-ly hair.

“Lance, c’mon.”

“Fine,” he groans, letting Keith shift off him and out the car. He follows, stretching out and blinking his eyes open. “Mmmmm,” he moans, scratching his stomach and smacking his lips. “You taste like smoke.”

“So do you,” Keith responds, getting in the passenger side.

“Touché.”

He turns the ignition key, taking a moment to lean back and breathe. Shifting the car into reverse, he pulls out of their stop on the mountain, smiling warmly when Keith takes his hand carefully, as though it were a bomb. He squeezes it, driving casually and relishing in the casual silence that filled the air as he drove to Keith’s neighbourhood. He doesn’t feel the need to tap his finger, and he notices that Keith’s other hand is resting on his cheek, rather than rubbing the fabric of his shirt.

It doesn’t take long to arrive, barely a ten minute drive. Lance kills the engine and turns to Keith.

“So, uh.. We’re steady then? Like, you ‘n me. We’re a thing,” he says, gesturing between them awkwardly.

“O-oh, yeah, we are. A thing. A good, big thing. Except it’s a quiet thing, right? We’re not gonna shout it to the world yet, right?”

“No.” Lance shakes his head. “It can be between us, for now. The thing.”

“Right. Well, usually when people go steady, the boyfriend gives their girlfriend a- a ring, right? A promise ring.”

“Yeah,” Lance breathes.

“I don’t have one,” Keith says bluntly. “But then sometimes the girl gives something, like an earring. But you’re not a girl, your ears aren’t even pierced, mine _are_ but I left my studs at home, and I’m pretty sure that only happened in _The Breakfast Club_.” When he’s done rambling, he looks out of breath.

“Oh, well, that’s fine-”

“I’m gonna make something up, because that’s all stuff girlfriends and boyfriends do, right? Well, since we’re both boyfriends and neither of us are girlfriends, I have no frame of reference for this. They don’t talk about this stuff on TV. I gotta make shit up.” He takes hold of his right glove, peeling it off, and holding it out to Lance. “For you,” he splutters.

Lance is pretty sure he implodes, because _Jesus Christ_ if that isn’t literally the best thing he never pictured happening. He takes the glove gingerly, rubbing the rough leather between his fingers.

“I have no idea when I’m gonna wear this. We don’t really need gloves in Arizona.”

There’s a moment of silence, before Keith says, “Oh my god, you’re the _worst_ , give it back to me right now-”

“No way!” Lance laughs, tugging it on and wiggling his fingers in Keith’s face. Keith’s fingers are stubbier than his, and the glove is loose. “I love it,” he admits. “Uh, thank you.” His face feels hot, this is so silly, it’s just a _glove_ -

Keith reaches forward and kisses him, sloppy and bad still, and Lance feels sparks go off in his head at the feeling. “I have to go,” he says, reaching behind him to fiddle with the door handle, which Lance unlocks. “Today was… good- more than good, great even- we should definitely do this again,” he blurts.

“Yeah,” Lance agrees. “Definitely again. T’morrow maybe?”

“I’ll have my bike then, maybe I can take you for a spin?” Keith suggests, and the idea makes Lance giddy.

“Yeah, you’re going to have to, considering how much I’ve driven you around these last couple days,” he teases.

Keith opens the door. “Shut up,” he reprimands lightly, kissing his cheek. “G’night Lance,” he says, as he steps out of the car.

“Later days,” he says dazedly, watching Keith stand. Keith almost turns and starts walking down the dimly lit street, when Lance calls out- “ _W_ _ait_! Keith, hold on a sec.”

Keith leans down, face peering through the window. “What is it?” he asks.

“Tomorrow’s a date, right?” He lifts his gloved fist, putting it in front of Keith. “Promise?”

Keith’s smile is genuine, goofy and lopsided, and Lance loves it. He uses his equally gloved left hand to bump his fist back. “Promise.”

Lance watches Keith’s retreating back, running a finger over his gloved palm. He turns the ignition on, pulling back out and towards the main street, and he turns the stereo back on, letting the sound of Morrissey’s still-strange voice fill his ears. He looks forward to the next day.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm fucking dying lmfao
> 
> Pacing?? what's that??? i can't hear you
> 
> I haven't drawn in three days. im dying
> 
> twitter/tumblr/instagram: @ehlihr (hm the fuck u)


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